A senior Russian politician took to Twitter last week to defend Russia in another fray with Poland over World War II.
Alexei Pushkov, a Federation Council member and international affairs pundit, responded to accusations that Moscow is responsible with Nazi Germany for starting World War II by blaming European nations for appeasing Hitler at the Munich Conference in September 1938.
“The beginning of World War II must be considered [the] Munich [conference] when the West gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler and Poland also took a piece,” Pushkov wrote on Twitter.
An hour later, he retweeted a photo of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain shaking hands with Hitler at Munich.
Pushkov’s tweet came in response to comments made by Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski on Thursday.
“It must be remembered that the Soviet Union contributed greatly to the outbreak of World War II and, together with Germans, invaded Poland, so was co-responsible for the outbreak of World War II,” the foreign minister told the Polish Internet TV portal, wPolsce.pl.
Waszczykowski’s comments coincided with Poland commemorating 73 years since the Warsaw Uprising.
Relations between Russia and Poland are at a low since the Polish government’s amendments in June to an anti-propaganda law that could lead to the tearing down of Soviet-era monuments, which the Poles describe as “symbols of a totalitarian regime.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has described the new law as an “outrageous provocation.”